AUTHOR AND SYNOPSIS OF THE STORY

CHAPTER II
AUTHOR AND SYNOPSIS OF THE STORY

2.1 Biography of Shirley Jackson and Her Works
Shirley Jackson was an American author who wrote short stories and novels. Her most famous work is her short story The Lottery, which combines a bucolic small-town-America setting with a horrific shock ending. The tone of most of her works is odd and macabre, with an impending sense of doom, often framed by very ordinary settings and characters. Born in San Francisco, California, 14 December 1916 to Leslie and Geraldine Jackson, she graduated from Syracuse University in 1940.

While she was a student there, she met future husband Stanley Edgar Hyman, who was to become a noted literary critic. Shirley and her family lived in the community of Burlingame, then an affluent middle-class suburb that would feature in Shirley's first novel The Road Through the Wall. In 1939, the Jackson family relocated to Rochester, New York, where Shirley first attended the University of Rochester (from which she was "asked to leave") before graduating with a BA from Syracuse University in 1940. While a student at Syracuse, Shirley became involved with the campus literary magazine, through which she met future husband Stanley Edgar Hyman, who was to become a noted literary critic.

In addition to her adult literary novels, Jackson also wrote a children's novel, Nine Magic Wishes, available in an edition illustrated by her grandson, Miles Hyman, as well as a children's play based on Hansel and Gretel and entitled The Bad Children. In a series of short stories, later collected in the books Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons, she presented a fictionalized version of her marriage and the experience of bringing up four children. These stories pioneered the "true-to-life funny-housewife stories" of the type later popularized by such writers as Jean Kerr and Erma Bombeck during the 1950s and 1960s.

In 1965, Shirley Jackson died of heart failure in her sleep at the age of 48. Shirley suffered throughout her life from various neuroses and psychosomatic illnesses. These ailments, along with the various prescription drugs used to treat them, may have contributed to her declining health and early death; it must also be noted, however, that at the time of her death Jackson was overweight and a heavy smoker. After her death, her husband released a posthumous volume of her work, Come Along With Me, containing several chapters of her unfinished last novel as well as several rare short stories (among them "Louisa, Please Come Home") and three speeches given by Jackson in her writing seminars.

2.2 Synopsis of The Lottery
The story takes a place in a beautiful morning in a small village right in the middle of town square. It was clear and sunny. Flowers were everywhere. The lawns throughout the village are brilliant green of three hundred souls. The time was around ten a clock when the lottery started the children has just got out of school for summer. The boys were gathering stones while the girls were standing around talking. Next the woman came together they talk gossip and then went with their husbands. The children were called to their family and finally they came after being called four or five times. A man came out to the middle of the town square holding a black box. The man’s name was Mr. Summers followed by Mr. Graves who was carrying a three-ledged stool. Mr. Summer placed the stool on the box. Mr. Martin held the box down while Mr. Summer stirred up the papers inside. The lottery started off by the calling of the families’ names. In each household the men was the head, so they prepared the slips of paper. They started calling names and slowly one by one each man of the house came and got a slip. There was only one woman who had to take the place of her husband. After their names being called and getting a slip of paper, they waited. While their names were being called, they were opening their papers tighter. When this had done, every one started the get happy but one, a man by name of Bill Hutchinson. He had pulled the slip of paper that no one wanted. It had a black spot in the middle of it. His wife Tessie said, “It wasn’t fair”.

All of the villagers had the same chance. The whole of The Hutchinsons gathered up together to pull again. The family were little Dave then next were Nancy, Bill Jr., Tessie and Bill who were the last. When they all had a slip of paper they started to open them. Dave opened his slip, nothing was on it; then Nancy, then Bill Jr., and nothing was there just like Dave’s. It came the time for the parents. Bill slowly opened nothing. He looked at his wife, Tessie did not want to open it but he made her. A big black spot was there on her slip of paper. Mr. Summers said “it’s Tessie,” then Bill showed all of the villagers her paper. Mr. Summers told “All right, folk. Let’s finish quickly.” Tessie walked on her way to the stool; while scrammed “it isn’t fair”. They started to throw the stone to her the whole time, while she just said, “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right”.

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

Share

Related Posts